Stay Home
by Room304
Summary: A greg angst fic all the way. No romance, just a view of his troubled past seen through the eyes of a 16 year old Greg. R for language, drug content, and child abuse. R


                    They called it an accident. "_He tripped and fell head-first down the stairs"_. Damn, talk about a shitty lie. Our house doesn't even have stairs. And I'm sure a fall down the fucking stairs could completely snap my femur in half. No one, not a single nurse or doctor, ever raised any visible suspicion. Why? Because my father is a very powerful and important man in this town.  Landing on his bad side would ruin anyone. No one noticed my frequent hospital visits, or if they did they assumed I was just accident prone because my family was too important for it to be anything other than that.

            That day, an argument about the stereo had triggered it. It wouldn't play his old Beatles CD and I was supposed to be "the smart one"; I should know how to fix it. My response of "I don't know everything" was probably not the smarted in the world. It pissed him off enough to get him out of that recliner in our living room that he spends practically all of his time in. He charged at me. I think I've started to become numb to the blows by now because I barely felt it. God forbid you try to fight back, because then you end up with a fucking broken leg.

            My sister, Amy, she fought back. And he stuck her hand down the fucking garbage disposal. He told everyone that she was fucking psycho, that she did it herself. Her two past suicide attempts didn't really help matters. She was shipped to a loony bin upstate. I hadn't heard from her since.

            I spent the night in the hospital, thank God. At least there I can get some time alone, away from him. There, I could actually sleep without worrying that something will set him off in the middle of the night. That he will barge into my room, unannounced, but never unexpected. I used to stay up for hours waiting for the light from the hall to leak into my room as he opened the door, because having him wake me up was always one of the worst times.

            My grandfather, my dad's dad, suspects something. I know he does. He has offered to let me come live with him in San Francisco, which is where I grew up. But I can't accept his offer; I can't leave. My entire family used to live with grandpa. But my granddad and my father had this huge fight about six years ago, when I was about ten. I never found out what it was about, I asked my mom several times but she never told me. Anyway, my dad got pissed and moved the four of us to New York City, where he was given a very good job at an investment firm, or some shit like that.  That's when things started getting bad.

            At school, the teachers and students just assume that a bully is hounding me. Little do they know that that bully is my father. It doesn't matter, even if they suspected something, what could they do? Amy tried to tell her friends what was happening to her; shortly after that, they stopped talking to her. No one wants to be around someone who's going through that because they don't know how to deal with the situation.  The truth is, there is no way to deal with it. All you can do is count down the days until you turn eighteen and can leave for good. I've only got two years left. Two fucking years.

            I don't know why I am complaining. There are so many others who have it worse that me. I mean, I live in a nice neighborhood, go to a good school, and my parents aren't murderers or molesters. But fuck, my life isn't easy.

            A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. A heavyset, middle-aged nurse entered. 

            "You've got a visitor." Panic- and lots of it. My head was swarming-_is it him? Has someone suspected something? What will he do? _Senseless worry overcame me and I suddenly found it hard to breathe, like someone was sitting on my chest. I was drowned with relief when my mother stuck her head in the room, but the relief disappeared when I listened to what she had to say. My mom had constantly been calm, almost hushed in a way. She had always been the successful girl who was going to escape a life of poverty and make something of her but was living a life that she knew she was not destined for. She hated my dad for doing what he did to us, but she never tried to do anything to stop him. I guess she thought that my father's antics were somehow her fault.

            Her sad black eyes found me and for a few seconds we just stayed there, staring in silence at one another. The nurse entered with a wheelchair and a pair of crutches. I looked at my mom, confused.

            "We're going home."

            The nurse gave me a look filled with something I couldn't identify as she helped me into the wheelchair. Weeks later, I realized the look the nurse was showing me-pity.

            I was lucky that night. Very lucky. After my mother helped me into the front door, I realized that we were the only ones in the house. My day left for a two-month meeting in London, at least that is what my mom said. I like to believe that she stuck up for me and made him leave for a while, however unrealistic that may be.

            I actually enjoyed the next two months with my mom. My cast was finally off. School seemed easier and there was talk about letting me graduate early, since I was already doing advanced work and had all the credits I needed. I learned about my mom in those months and I realized that we had a lot in common, a lot more than I ever thought we did. She even took me up to see Amy, who was so different that she actually scared me. After all of that time in the institution, she had finally lost it. 

The two months had to end though. And they did, but my dad didn't show up until two weeks after the day he was due back. For a while, I actually thought he might never come back, but I knew he didn't have the balls to pull a move like that. He got some fucking sick pleasure in hurting other people and he couldn't miss an opportunity to beat the shit out of his favorite moving target.

            He walked through the door late on a Tuesday afternoon. My mother and I were sitting on the couch, watching an old movie; I think it was some old science fiction movie. I could tell from the moment I saw his face that he was pissed. He threw his bags down on the floor and walked over to us, silent. I guess his two-month vacation wasn't exactly his idea.

            "Greg, why don't you go to your room?" my mom suggested, trying to get me a quick escape. She sensed what was going to happen, and to her credit, tried to prevent it. I stood up and was walking, well, more like sprinting, back to my room when I felt the first blow; a hard left hook to the side of my head. I whipped around to face him, and his fist collided with my stomach. I collapsed on the floor. As I was lying there, trying to catch my breath, I caught a glimpse of my mom, standing by the sofa with her hands at her mouth, tears streaming down her fucking face as she stood there, completely helpless and fucking scared shitless. It was at that moment that I realized the full effect this shitty excuse of a man had on our life. He terrorized us, and tortured one of us so severely that she would never be coming back. He thought he had the fucking right to destroy us like that? He had ripped our family to shreds without a single care. But in the weeks he had been gone, my mother and I had started to put the pieces of our broken family back together. Fuck, we were actually making progress. But now it was gone, almost as if the last two months hadn't even existed. I couldn't let him take those two months away from us. They were the only portion of my life that didn't seem like complete bullshit.

            Before I knew it I was on my feet. I used all the strength I could muster to pound that first punch into his fucking jaw. Now he was the one on the floor. Before I knew it I was on him, hitting, kicking, biting- anything I could think of. Flesh pounded flesh, blood mixed with blood. Blood-the only thing the two of us had in common was in those seven fucking alleles. His blood coated my hands and I can honestly say that I enjoyed it, and that thought in itself scared the shit out of me so badly that I stopped and stood up, looking down at him. He raised himself off of the floor and spit-blood and teeth. He grinned at me, a maniacal grin covered his face, and the fucking son of a bitch began to speak.

            "I am going to rip every limb off your body and then, I am going to watch you bleed out on the floor. And when you start screaming out in pain, begging me to take you out of your misery, I'll just laugh."

            "No, you enjoy having me around to much to kill me. Who would you put down to make yourself feel better if I wasn't here? You wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you didn't have someone else's life to ruin." 

_Only two years left, only two years._ I tried reminding myself. And then, before I could do anything to stop myself, I was attacking him again, my hands colliding with his torso and face like a scene out of _Fight Club._ It wasn't just a one sided fight, he was hitting me back, but he was too old, too much of a fucking lard ass to win. Minutes later he stopped fighting back. Panting, I stood up and face my mother who was sobbing now.

            "What did you do?" She screamed at me and then said the sentence I never expected to come out of her mouth. "Get out of this house!" She cried and fell to the floor to help him. Despite recent years, she still remembered the man who she married, not the fucker who filled her life with so much bullshit, and she was going to stand by him until the very end. I ran out the front door without even looking back.

            That was less than six hours ago and I am still standing under the bridge that's about a mile from our house, nursing my injuries from what was hopefully our last battle. The sirens have disappeared now. It is incredulous to me that I changed from the top student in my class and the perfect son to a wanted criminal, and I couldn't figure out what to do now. Let's face it- I'm a sixteen year old with no money, no car, but at least I have a place to go. Even if I have to walk there myself, I'm going to San Francisco to take my grandpa up on his offer. And I'm only two years early.

A song, to soothe you son of mine

Your broken bones heal in due time

Another day in silence suffering such a bitter pill

We're the sons and daughters Daddy hates too much to kill

Stay home

Revenge is mine saithe the lord

And you, you only hit me when you're bored

Storybooks and happy endings

Bite your lip in fear

Pray the next blow kills you so you won't have to be here

You said son, I didn't mean it

There's something evil on the inside living in me

She said son, he didn't mean it

There's something wicked on the inside

Revenge is mine saithe the lord

And you, you only hit me when you're bored

Storybooks and happy endings

Bite your lip in fear

Pray the next blow kills you so you won't have to be here

Stay home

AN: I do realize that this is kind of out of character right now. This is pure Greg angst, and was supposed to be a one chapter fic, but I am thinking of writing another story telling about Greg's trip to San Francisco, which one of the team he met (Grissom or Catherine, I'm thinking) more than five years before he got his job at csi, and how he got to where he is on the show, but only if I can get enough support for it. 

Also, I am lucky enough to have never been in a situation even close to this story. I don't know much about abuse, but hopefully I made it believable.

            The song 'Stay Home' by Vendetta Red, a great song by a very weird band, inspired this story.

            I'm having some computer trouble, so it will be awhile before this, The Agony of a Stalker, and anything else that I have written, or planned on writing, is updated.

            Please review!!! 


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